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Stone Circles Causing Emotional Sensations (Sorrow, Etc.)

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Anonymous

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Taxan

I would like to tell you of something that happened to me several years ago when back in England. It was just before Christmas, about 22nd Dec, that I went to Stonehenge, somewhere I had always wished to go.

It was a fine day, a bit cold but clear. I started walking round the Henge really happy to be there at last, and was about halfway round when I was overwhelmed by a feeling of terrible sadness and loss....so bad that I started to cry, ( glad no one was near me) also this awful coldness enveloped me. I just stood there, sobbing and feeling somehow isolated.

I managed to walk on but the pleasure of being there had gone...I have never felt sorrow like that...such desolation.... and I felt like I had walked into a freezer... just could not get warm.

These feelings upset me so much that instead of going back into Salisbury to shop, I caught the next train back to Warminster and went to bed...the feeling stayed with me for a few days, just gradually easing off...but I never want to feel that desolation and unbearable sorrow again.

http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/sorrow.shtml

Link is dead. Remainder of the originally posted text has been appended above (final 2 of 4 paragraphs).

SALVAGED FROM: https://web.archive.org/web/20020204220448/http://www.forteantimes.com/happened/sorrow.shtml
 
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Sometime in May 2000 my father was driving towards the Merry Maiden's stone circle, near Lamorna in West Cornwall, when he was over come with an almost overwhelming feeling of sadness. He felt compelled to park & touch each of the stones.

I should add that my father isn't given to 'psychic' experiences & found his experience inexplicable. My mother was also with him, but didn't feel anything untoward.
 
My Dad tells a story about Waylands Smithy in Oxfordshire. He took my mum up to see it when they were courting about 30 years ago.

They were standing just inside the circle of trees when my Dad turned around to speak to my mum only to discover that she was running at full pelt accross the fields!

My Mum says that she was just overcome with fear and sorrow, so much so that she felt she had to get away and get away fast. She has never been back and she tells me that it took a couple of days for her to 'shake it off'.

Having done a little research myself lately I discovered that it was completely excavated and then re-constructed before my parents visited it. The tree circle was planted in the last couple of centuarys too so I have no clue what made her feel like that.
 
I've been to Stonehenge a couple of timies and the only saddness I've had is the way English Heritage have looked after it, what with the concrete tunnel etc. Surely something more appropriate for a vistors center could be built.

And the road that runs next to it is a bit offputting if you want to get spiritual. Pity really. Avebury is supposed to be better so I must get off my arse one day and visit it!:)
 
For my 21st birthday my parents treated me to a trip to many those places that I had wanted to visit for a long time.

Setting off early from Oxford we went first to Uffington (having already visited the Rollrights a few months earlier). While they poked around the old earthworks atop the ridge I walked along beneath the underside of the horse and down to Dragon's Hill, which I climbed. Once at its top I had a sudden sense of the antiquity of the place and I looked out at the landscape and felt the weight of all those years upon me. It engendered a certain sense of melancholy, but only so far as I felt small within my place in the world and like a, not unwelcome, intruder into something far larger than myself.

The following day, after visiting Glastonbury and numerous hill figures and other places of note (a full list of which is unavailable since my memory of parts of the journey are unclear), we arrived at Stonehenge. While there, at was to be my first trip to them, my biggest sense was of disappointment. The place felt dead, washed out, as if the countless vistitors had sucked the vitality out of the place. Moving on I then visited Avebury and yet again I felt very little other than everything felt wrong, out of place....

Anyway a few years later, while studying Archaeology I had another chance to visit Stonehenge. We spent the day wandering the Sacred Landscape of Salisbury Plain, exploring the relationship of the barrows, the ancient trackways and other features but we didn't do more than glance at the stones from afar until night began to decend. As darkness fell, after the last of the tourists had departed, we were welcomed in and permitted into the sanctum sanctorum, to stand amongst the very Stones themselves.

Excitement jumped from one to the other as we entered to the horseshoe shaped ring of Traithlons, only to die as we finally stood between them. The stones in darkness, the black vault of night above us and only our lecturer and security man's torches for illumination it felt very small and closed in. A hush moved amongst us, a sense of standing within Sacred Ground, far more holy and potent than any Christian Church. We found ourselves speaking in whispers, even our lecturer whom had given this talk many times before. He pointed out to us with the beam of his flashlight the numerous cavings and markings, even the graffity made by prior generations.

After his brief lecture we were permitted to walk amongst the stones and study them, but not touch, never to touch. So naturally we did, or rather I did, a brief brush against the outside of one of the triathlons. There was no tingle of jolt of magic power, rather a sense of solidity and fraility. I felt suddenly guilty of my stolen caress and angry at those who would violate these ancient liths. Stonehenge is a place of power, yes, but much of it's power comes from the place it has and the role it plays in our national, perhaps even global, conciousness. It is a shame that we can't all experience Stonehenge like I have, but also a good thing. Otherwise they may not be there very much longer. They survived millennia; in modern times the building of nearby roads and even the vagrancies of the MOD, but they may not survive the attentions of modern tourists and pollution.

I've nothing to add, I just thought that another perspective may be useful.

Niles "look, don't touch" Calder
 
Niles Calder said:
It is a shame that we can't all experience Stonehenge like I have, but also a good thing.
Click to expand...

Too true and it sounds like a great experience. Reminds me of a quote from The Meaning Of Life " You lucky lucky b*****d" Wish I had that opportunity.
:rolleyes:
 
The "presence" of ancient dead/sacrificial victims etc maybe?
Never experienced anything like that. Got the a great sense of awe at Castlerigg stone circle though,one of the most beautiful sites i've ever been to :)
 
It's really rather odd, all this. There are stone circles all over the place up here, can't get get moved for the things. I've never been in one at night, but I have to say they seem sad to me. That may be something I bring there myself, I suppose. I wish we hadn't come as far as we have. I know fine all the reasons why the world is better now than it was, but there are more, and greater, reasons why it is much worse. We have lost so much! Traded it for laziness and obesity and selfishness. I don't suppose that can be changed, now. :(
 
If you're in the Lake District you can try the Keswick Stone circle. Small but perfectly formed and well looked after.
 
Sorrow

Your story reminds me very much of something that happened to me some years ago now. It was not in this country but in Jerusalem at the Western (Wailing) Wall of the old temple. I was one of a party of visitors there but went alone to stand near the wall. As I closed my eyes to soak up the atmosphere I was suddenly overwhelmed by feelings of intense sorrow and grief. You might imagine that this would be only natural given where I was, but this was quite sudden and very deeply felt. I just stood for some time with silent tears streaming down my face. No-one else present appeared to have been affected this way, and I assumed that perhaps some of us have an ability to pick up whatever has been left behind by centuries of emotion in a place. Who can say?

Hochiwich.
 
This thing sounds an awful lot like T.C. Lethbridge's "Ghoul". I forget which book it is in, but he vividldly describes a sort of fieling if incholate grief and despair which hangs over some places and sensed by people on occasions. He experienced it, if memory serves me well, on Beachy Head, and speculates that some of the suicides there may not be entirely voluntary, but could be triggered by an encounter with this atmosphere
 
I visited Stonehenge 6 months ago and experienced the same thing, a negative feeling that came on when I was half way round the circle. It wasn't as intense as you describe though. I also visited other places like Avebury & Uffington on the same holiday and came away with peaceful pleasant feelings but with Stonehenge I came away feeling that it was a place of blood with nothing spiritual about it. I remember looking around to see if any other visitors seemed to notice the feeling but they just seemed to be acting normally.
 
stone circles

A friend of mine came down from Manchster. and we took her to see the Merrymaidens circle near Lamorna. She was impressed and touched one of the stones and jumped visibly.Quite shaken she said she had felt a sort of elecric shock. After walking round a bit she said that she had a sort of prickly feeling when near the stones. Later whilst walking back down the road, she suddenly said she could feel it again. Inspecting the hedge we found another standing stone which was not immediately visible! Any explanations folk?
 
places that eminate sorrow

Just below Imbil in Qld,on Yabba creek where I go fishing ocassionally, is a spot that always seems sad,but in reality is very beautiful.Doing some research I find it was the spot of an aboriginal massacre by the early white settlers.Up to 100 people were slaughtered and their bodies dumped in the large pond that gathers there.Locals claim the bones were visible until the 50s there were so many of them .I guess it happens everywhere extreme violence has occured,maybe as a warning?
 
I have heard that places can act as a sort of "tape recorder", as you will, and that extreme emotion can still be picked up by people who are sensitive to this type of thing because it's somehow "embedded" in the place. If you think about it, we are energy-based creatures--why would this be an unreasonable explanation for this phenomenon? Think of haunted houses or places where violent murders or the like have happened. . . . . . the examples are many.

Personally, I have had experiences of this type without ever knowing what the history of the place was--it's eerie, because you suddenly have these feelings come over you and you don't know why. You can also sense good and evil in the same way.
 
Ancient Artifact Sorrow

I had something along these lines happen a while back. I was visiting a museum exhibit with a wonderful collection from the Cairo museum. I was captivated by a huge stone statue of Sekhmet, the lioness goddess. I kept going back to stand in front of her & enjoy her beauty and energy.

I noticed that the geometry of the statue's gaze and other lines converged in a spot on the floor about 10 feet in front of her. If I stood beyond or at that spot, there was a feeling of awe & fear when looking at the statue. If I stood closer than that spot, I felt welcomed & protected, like a "mom" was pulling me into her lap. I stood for a while, enjoying this feeling.

Then, a woman stepped between me & the statue. Suddenly, I felt so sad, my eyes watered up and I felt a deep, sorrowful heartache that was overwhelming. I moved over so that she was not between me and the statue, and the sorrow went away! I went back and forth- if the woman was between me & Sekhmet, I was overcome with waves of sorrow. This sadness would vanish if I had a direct line to the statue. I don't know what was going on with that woman, but it was a powerful experience.
 
I read a book a few years ago that described stonehenge as one of the most misuderstood of the neolithic sites. It described stonehenge as part of a landscape of the dead in opposed to other monuments of this kind which were built for the living. This could be the reason for the feeling of sadness here. Possibly the stones were not used for joyous rituals of observing the seasons pass but of rituals of laying their dead to rest.
 
There's a standing stone near the Merry Maidens, but on the north side of the road. I visited it with a group one time and was shown how, if you hold your hand just a short distance from the face of the stone, you can feel a warmth apparently radiating from it. (This was on a cloudy winter's day, so the stone hadn't been basking in the sun.) IIRC the effect wasn't uniform but varied as you moved your hand around.

I've been to Stonhenge (many years ago) but remember nothing about feelings of sorrow, or of anything out of the ordinary.

One thing to remember about these sites is that we don't necessarily see them in the landscape they were built in. I visited Callanish on the Isle of Lewis in the mid 70s. Very bleak and bare, with the stones looking quite alien and strange. But many years later I saw an archaeology programme where they were excavating in the Hebrides, and it was revealed that in prehistoric times the islands would have been heavily wooded.

It was probably early man who cleared the woods for agriculture, which started the process that has since led to the formation of the bare landscape we see today, with extensive peat bogs.
 
I think there are many things that we don't have a full understanding of. Stonehenge could be so many things, but unless there is some clear indication of what it was or was used for (like maybe some ancient text, like the Dead Sea Scrolls), we may never know the full significance of this site.

:confused:
 
Stonehenge

When I was a girl, forty or so years ago, you could go right up to the stones and sit on them or whatever! I have a photo (yes, we really did have cameras in those long-gone days!), of myself with my visiting French penfriend, leaning against one of the stones to eat our sandwiches! (The stones weren`t put back into their proper upright position until after the summer of 1961.) We didn`t feel any negative vibes whatsoever. Perhaps you feel what you hope or expect to feel.
MsT
 
I visited Stonehenge about a month ago and the only "feeling" I got was one of pure boredom! :blah:
 
a bad feeling about this

I found Stonehenge to be a very starnge, creepy place, and i never even got to go through the fence. Salisbury Plain itself was eerie on it's own - so very, very vast - it really felt like some other world, like nothing was beyond it.
Another spooky place was Culloden, a battle site up in Scotland. Very bad vibes (a friend of mine who claims to be psychic absolutely hated the place)! And another, unexpectedly creepy place was Glastonbury - it's generally raved about in a positive way but to me felt very frightening, as did the whole place, the town. I couldn't pinpoint why, but I was glad to leave.
 
Re: Stonehenge

MsT said:
When I was a girl, forty or so years ago, you could go right up to the stones and sit on them or whatever! I have a photo (yes, we really did have cameras in those long-gone days!), of myself with my visiting French penfriend, leaning against one of the stones to eat our sandwiches! (The stones weren`t put back into their proper upright position until after the summer of 1961.) We didn`t feel any negative vibes whatsoever. Perhaps you feel what you hope or expect to feel.
MsT
Click to expand...

When I was a kid, I went to Stonehenge with my parents. We were allowed to go up and touch the stones, which I did. My memory is dim, but I don't remember feeling any notable emotions. The only thing that went through my mind was awe at the age and sheer size of the stones.
I agree - the whole thing is purely subjective.
 
Not unusual

I've spent a lot of time at 'sacred sites' (note the commas - they may well be sacred to some, but that doesn't mean that all people find them sacred or that they were held to be sacred by their builders) - I worked as warden at Rollright for a time, and do volunteer work for English Heritage on occasion. These sorts of experiences are by no means unusual, or even extreme compared to some that I have heard reported. There was the story of the chap working on Paul Deveraux's Dragon Project, who touched the North Stone (which isn't actually in the North) at Rollright and was thrown back 7 feet (no references - most of stories like this are only hearsay). There was the small group of three (one man and two women) who came to perform a ritual at Rollright, and came running out in tears about an hour later, saying that things had been attacking them and trying to possess them. On asking we discovered that they had started by casting a circle, and generally people who start by casting circle don't seem to do so well there.

Avebury's inner sanctum has given me nosebleeds and severe headaches on the two occasions I have gone near it - I avoid it now. It feels very broken to me, there is really no other way of describing it.

West Kennet longbarrow is known for some weird experiences, but the place is in a shocking mess. Stanton Drew can be pretty spooky as well. I 'met' this woman there once who was very tall and regal, black with very short hair. Claimed to have been around there for a very long time and from the look in her eyes I believed her. She certainly wasn't there physically.

I've seen all sorts of weird stuff at these places, including things that try to pretend to be trees and bushes when you look at them, although not terribly successfully. I have no explanation for it. I don't necessarily believe that there are supernatural forces at work - I don't think anything that is in the world can be supernatural, really, by definition. I don't even believe that these sites were necessarily religious in nature when built. It's all very interesting, however. :confused:

Sam
:spinning
 
More!

You must detail some of your experiences! They sound far too interesting...
 
Fear of objects

I remember hearing that the actor Billy Bob Thornton is scared of antique furniture and am not surprised at all. I used to have this big fear of large stuffed animals - a really panicky one, too. I'm not sure if I still do because i try and stay away from them now! The natural history museum in London was a real endurance test for me... as was, actually, a museum in nottingham that had a huge first world war english tank; I had to pass this through a narrow passage and just became really shakey - it was just so dark, big, oppressive, and for some reason absolutely terrifying to me. I could hardly look at it.
 
Ain't the power of the Suggestion amazing?

Niles "Playing Catch-up" Calder
 
Re: More!

tonylovell said:
You must detail some of your experiences! They sound far too interesting...
Click to expand...

That depends on what you mean by 'far too interesting'. Either these things have some sort of basis in objective reality, whatever that might be, or I'm a bleeding loon, or I suffer from TLE, or any combination of the above and possibly some other things I haven't got around to considering seriously.

Plenty of people have far weirder experiences than I do. I rarely come across people who can look at those experiences with a genuinely open mind, however. Usually people, when pressed, will say something like 'Well, you can obviously say I might be a compelte freaking madman, but I know that the seven serpents have been disturbed by the digging up of Seahenge and we are all going to die from Foot and Mouth because we don't pay sufficient homage to the Great Dragon Earth Mother'.

OK, so that was a bit of an exaggeration, but not as much of an exaggeration as I wish it were. I'm very interested in why we have experiences like this, why some people have them more frequently and/or more intensely than others, and what effect having these experiences has on the way people interact with others.

I have strange experiences fairly frequently and with a good degree of intensity. I, however, do not believe I have communicated with crystal singing dolphins from the Pleides, nor do I think that I am some sort of magically advanced soul who has been sent to Earth to study humans. Plenty of people do end up believing things like that. Why is it that I approach these experiences with bemused curiosity whilst others think they have found the answer to the secret key of the universe?

That's the bit that I find fascinating.

I spotted a church just outside Taunton just after I moved down here, at West Buckland, and was bowled over by the intensity of the energy at the place. This set me furiously poring over maps and cycling around the countryside getting very excited by patterns in the landscape. Then I found I'd 're-discovered' the Michael Line and felt very embarassed. I don't necessarily believe in the Michael Line as depicted in "The Sun and The Serpent", but there's something there alright. What is it? I don't know. How come I can see it? I don't know. Does it mean I am in direct communication with aliens? Er...no. But some people think that it does mean this - I was even told by someone once that I am really an elf but I am denying my heritage. What makes people react that way?

My next trip is to see St Michael's Mount, in Cornwall.

Sam
 
Re: Not unusual

Ravenbait said:
There was the small group of three (one man and two women) who came to perform a ritual at Rollright, and came running out in tears about an hour later, saying that things had been attacking them and trying to possess them. On asking we discovered that they had started by casting a circle, and generally people who start by casting circle don't seem to do so well there.
Click to expand...
Hmm! Coincidence time!
I came away from this thread just now to read some email, and on an email list I belong to appeared a posting about plans for a Solstice ritual at the Rollrights. Part of the message is:
..... Only thing I would suggest to whoever may be willing to take this on is to use the circle itself as the 'circle' and not construct one within the area itself... other than that and making sure to verbally acknowledge the stones/spirits/ancestors anything goes really. The site has stood for so long and seen so many uses and beliefs that I don't feel that it cares what name(s) are given to the Gods as long as respect is shown....
Click to expand...
 
Suggestion doesn't explain why I had the same feeling - sadness- at the same point in the circle as the first person on this thread i.e. half way round the circle from the tourist entrance.

I have been to other sites and never felt anything except general feelings of calm, even when I have been to places that are supposed to have atmospheres I have never noticed anything.

Also the spot where I felt it was not on any of the alignments or significant in any way and when I went further round the circle towards one of the gates or whatever they are called there was nothing there, it was only in one particular spot. It was a very negative feeling and felt to me as though some one had been killed there. Also it felt as though it had nothing to do with religion etc. and was not as old as the circle.

Ok I am prepared to accept that this might just have been in my head but I am still interested that someone else felt the same thing in the same place. Probably I would have just forgotten all about it if there wasn't a thread on it.
 
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